Germany’s ‘kebab cap’ aimed at destroying immigrant businesses

Germany’s centre-to-right party Christian Democratic Union (CDU) seeks to curb Turkish-run kebab shops in the city-centre of a small town in Baden-Wurttemberg.

The so-called “kebab cap” has sparked a countrywide discussion on the feasibility of such restrictions.

The proposal affects not only kebab shops, but other, essentially foreign-run small businesses, including barber shops, late-shops, mobile telephone shops, shisha bars and nail salons.

Thomas Aurich, a Heilbronn CDU politician, recently spoke to journalists, explaining that there was, in his opinion, an over-proliferation of such business in the Heilbronn town centre. He announced his intention to stop their “unchecked growth”.

“We want to put a cap on the number of kebab shops opening up in order to reign in this unchecked growth. It’s okay to have one here and there, but not five one after another,” he said.

Heilbronn is a city of 125,000 inhabitants north of Stuttgart. Sixty percent of the town’s inhabitants have a foreign background. In the centre of town there are reportedly 20 kebab shops.

In the whole city centre there are statistically 3.5 kebab shops for every 10,000 inhabitants, fewer than the national average, but far too many in the eyes of Aurich and his cohorts.

“We are anticipating a wonderful 120 million investment in coming years,” said Aurich referring to the planned construction of a new shopping centre to be built shortly, amongst other projects.

In Aurich’s point of view investors could potentially shy away from the plethora of – not only kebab shops, but also foreign-run barber shops, late-shops, mobile telephone shops, shisha bars and nail salons, which are somehow being cast as inferior, low-class, un-German.

CDU MP Jurgen Linz of Wesel, a town of 60 thousand in North Rhein Westphalia, has taken up Aurich’s call to action, announcing that he would seek to accomplish something similar in his constituency.

“You can’t buy any sporting goods anymore and there are no cake shops or tea shops” - things presumably which would be run by Germans. “The people miss these things.”

Linz went on to say that, “it is important to protect the city centre from the dangerous down-turn that is threatening to destroy our values.”

Gunnar Schupelius, the top editor of Berlin's biggest tabloid BZ, insinuated that such foreign-run businesses somehow were a magnet for organized crime.

Aurich’s proposal has, in the time being, been scuttled following legal consultation casting doubt on the feasibility of such a plan.

The local council in Heilbronn has, instead, voted across party lines to draw up an urban development concept in a joint initiative called “Aufbruch Innenstadt” (the city centre awakes), the goal being to “encourage the diversity and ongoing attractiveness and strengthening of the city centre.”

Despite the fact that Aurich’s proposal has been quashed, the ideas put forward by two CDU politicians have fallen on fertile ground in Germany where it is now considered good form to bad-mouth foreigners.

Some conservative German politicians have taken up the ‘kebab cap’ cause in their bid to score political points before elections.

Schupelius, the editor for the BZ, a publication known for its markedly anti-Turkish, anti-foreigner slant, recently entered the debate, wondering if a similar move could be applied to Berlin, where there are around 4,000 kebab shops – the most of any German city.

The journalist – a particularly sleazy columnist for the paper known for his anti-immigrant tirades - focused on two streets in predominantly immigrant districts of Berlin, where there were a lot of Turkish shops, criticising their “murky lack of transparency” and suggesting they could be run by criminal “clans”.

He also referred to some alleged “incidents” where people were apparently knocked out in front of such shops. In the end, the journalist conceded somewhat half-heartedly that such moves like in Baden Wurttemberg and NRW would not work in Berlin.

Little Istanbul

It’s a Friday night around Kottbusser Tor – or Kotti – as it is affectionately called here in Berlin, a heavily Turkish neighbourhood in the district of Kreuzberg.

After languishing for many years as a neglected Turkish ghetto, the area has become today Berlin’s premier nightlife hotspot, where night-owls, hipsters and club goers rub shoulders with local Turks in Turkish-run bistros and baklava shops; here in Kreuzberg kebab shops are hip and the place to be.

“They call this ‘Little Istanbul’, but that is not correct, says Hatice K. out front of a brand new kebab shop on Adelbertstrasse, right in the thick of things where Berlin is the most Turkish. “In fact practically the whole neighbourhood is in the hands of Anatolian Turks.”

Nefis is one such kebab shop run by people originally from Urfa, in south-east Türkiye, from where – it is said – practically all of the kebab shop workers in Berlin hail from.

Nefis has only been in business for around seven months and business is booming. Balloons hang in festoons, a mix of Kurdish folk music and old school hip-hop blares, while Germans queue up for Berlin’s latest veggie kebab.

Asked what he makes of the Heilbronn plan to put in place a so-called “kebab cap”, and whether Berlin needs a similar regulation, Ibrahim D. says: “It’s nonsense. It’s true there are more kebab shops of late. But each restaurant offers its own specialty. One offers chicken, the other lamb; another one specializes in veggie kebabs…Everyone loves kebab.”

Yusuf K., an employee at Nefis Doner, adds: “The reason there are so many of our people in the kebab business, not to mention in mobile shops, late shops, shisha bars, barbers, is that many of them are recent arrivals who don’t have the skills for anything else. They work there and they move on. I myself don’t intend to work here for longer than I have to.”

A Turkish customer says: “It’s clear the CDU wants to make this move because they want to keep the kanaken (a pejorative term for foreigners from south-east Europe) down. But what would this country be without us kanaken? It would be a zero country.”